Over the last 30 or 40 years I have had a time or two that I had to deal with bank fraud or credit card fraud but it was always something that I myself caught. Right now I am dealing with something that totally confuses me. A couple of weeks ago Truist bank sent me a text message and a day or so later a phone message about charges on my debit card. I was a little skeptical because I had never in my life had a bank text me. I called Truist back and they asked if the charges to a company called Braintrout.net were legit. I informed them I had never heard of Braintrout and for sure had never charged anything with them. Now here is where the confusion comes in. How the hell did Truist know the charges might be fraud if I didn’t report them? Later I googled Braintrout & Braintrout.net and in appearance it looks like a legit company. Now I am really confused because if Truist suspects them of fraud and obviously somebody committed fraud on my debit card what the hell are they still doing business online for? Seems to me if it is a bogus company they would have been shut down and if it is a legit company how did Truist know the charges to my card were fraud without me reporting it first? Does anybody know anything about this Braintrout.net company and what they do? I mean my problem has been solved, the money which wasn’t much in the first place is back in my account and I have been issued new cards. If I had been the one to catch the fraud I’d understand, I’d just love to know what tipped Truist bank off that there may have been a problem with those small charges and who the hell is Braintrout and what do they do?
Following.. I'm anxious to hear others' responses to this. Sorry you're dealing with the irritations and Truist.
Banks have all sort of flags set up to protect you. If the charge came in from another country for instance just minutes after you used it in Florida, that would flag it. If the charge was online and you never make online purchases, that might flag it. They look for activity outside of the norm. My guess is it is based on the geographical location of the charge or something else that seems outside of your spending norms. My daughter just went off to school and I get a million texts a day from Amazon or Hulu, Netflix etc asking if I was the one logging in from an unusual location. Banks do similar.
My wife and I have both had this happen in the past 2-3 months. One was completely bogus - a fishing attempt to get info and the other was fraud. She got a fraud alert text from her bank. Someone in FL had charged $150 to her account at a company that really doesn’t seem to exist. I think that probably her bank card number was compromised and sold for a few dollars on the dark web. Also had an attempt by an entity posing as the USPS. And it was an exceedingly good spoof including the logo, and disclaimer msg. They texting me wanting to refund money and the weird thing was just the day prior I had refused a package from them that was leaking Liquid. Prob a coincidence. Anyway more fraud attempts against us in 3 months than in decades and decades previous. I truly hate thieves.
... also I get an error at the site you listed. Brain Trout takes me to an artist on DeviantArt. (Which is a legit site), but the . Net you mentioned does not load for me.
Truist, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc....all have massive fraud divisions that use Artificial Intelligence to map purchases, card activity behavior, etc....and identify suspicious activity and then see how many suspicious actions all over lap to one or a few nexuses, at which point they open investigations. This goes on all of the time without most people even know. Bank of America recently flagged a fraudulent activity on our ATM card, locked the cards, froze the account and had the money replaced all before they had sent us automated text messages to call their fraud division. Within 24 hours we had all new ATM cards and on-going extra transaction monitoring for our accounts for 1 year.
One time they told me it was flagged as “suspicious” because the person entered different card expiration dates dozens of times, like they were trying to guess it.
Banks have algorithms and machine learning to detect fraud based on all kinds of things (demographics, your habits, geofencing, etc). Sometimes to the point of being overbearing and denying legitimate transactions.
Looks like a scam to me from their website. Look at the footer. All Rights Reserved. Nimby Limited, 666 West End Ave #11S, New York, New York, US, 10025 Nimby? Really?! Also, that address is an apartment.
Several years back when I was a contractor i was trying to pay a pretty large bill at the Home Depot Pro Desk on my HD Mastercard. They declined my payment because it was "a suspicious amount". I told them that I wanted to PAY THEM money on my balance. They said I had to verify my identity. I said not only do I verify mine, but I would like to further authorize the entire planet to make payment on my behalf going forward.
BOA has saved me at least 3 times with their AI. The first time I asked them how did they know? They said it was outside your "normal habits", kinda scary. But it saved me fighting about a ticket to Milan and an $1880 a night hotel there..
This could have something to do with their vigilance. As others have stated many banks and credit card companies are now taking an active role in fraud. A search on Truist fraud and banking scams pulls up some interesting results. Obviously something is going on with this bank and potential hacks. BB&T and SunTrust merged back in 2019 and became Truist Bank. BB&T had issues with hacks and scams back in 2019 and SunTrust had a data breach back in 2018. EXCLUSIVE: Local business owners report losing thousands from scams targeting Truist bank accounts More small business owners say they’ve had thousands of dollars stolen from their Truist bank accounts following FOX 5’s reporting on an Adams Morgan bar that lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The owners of Johnny Pistolas said just before New Year’s Eve, fraudsters took $460,000 via wire transfer. They said the bank was only able to retrieve half of that, and now the case has been closed with $230,000 still gone. Truist Alert Scam | {July} Find The Truth Behind It! This article contains all the information on the Truist Alert scam and additional details on the ways to recognize these fraudulent messages. Keep an eye on our blog for further information.
Thanks, I played it pretty safe I don't completely trust Truist yet. Mrs51 and I were with Suntrust for over 40 years when the Suntrust/BB&T merger went through. I am still not comfortable with Truist but was willing to give them time to get their Sh*t straightened out after the merger. Anyway when I got the text from Truist I treated it like it was a scam, never answered the text but when I got the phone message I called Truist not on the number from the message but on their regular business number. Even then after having them cancel my debit card I ran directly to 7-11 and ran a purchase through to make sure the card would be denied. We are still kicking around the idea of changing banks, we were with SunTrust for so many years with very few issues and a long history of trust between us and them. What is really freaky about this incident was the small amounts of money involved. 2 of the charges were for like $39 and some change and the other was for $4 & change. Less than $85 total. You would thing somebody running a scam would be after larger amounts.
Typically what happens is small charges in the range of $30 - $50 are tests to validate the account. If the charges go through without a hitch then scammers go for the big stuff.
One thing to keep in mind is that under federal law your bank is the gatekeeper of your account. It is their responsibility to prevent money from fraudulently leaving. You have the most rights if you report the fraudulent activity within one month from the date of the statement on which the activity appears. You do lose some rights after that time but retain others until one year. A few years ago I sent a $50,000 check for work which was intercepted by somebody who washed off the name of the payee and printed in another name. They deposited the check at a Bank of America branch and then withdrew the money. Bank of America refused to help and finally after 14 months our bank had to refund the $50,000 to our account.
I'm going through the same thing right now. Except it was my tax payment to the IRS. Washed and cashed at a BoA.
